For several years, specialized agencies have been searching for "new programs" that could reinvigorate the support for space activities and stop their budgets' decline of. But the same time, they have been retrenching by focusing on collecting and distributing information, putting scientific research as their core projects. On a planet soon to host a ten-billion population that will impact the biosphere's workings as never before, at a time when many governments and organizations see the virtue in the management of scarcity, musing on the origins of life and of the Solar System can hardly be expected to be invested with high priority. The Space Option arose from the analysis of the issues confronting humanity. In reviewing the material needs of the human population in the near future, the analysis finds that the impact on the biosphere will perforce be much larger than it usually seems to be acceptable to assume.

References:

Implementing the Space Option: Elaboration and Dissemination of a New Rationale for Space - Part II: The Space Option